Текст книги "Inheritor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

But it wasn’t television, and the smile Ilisidi gave him was a dangerous, dangerous thing, while—the human tumbled to the fact slowly, being dead to atevi emotions– hewas in exactly the same position, appointed and protected by the Barjida’s descendant, Tabini-aiji.

Who had sent him here. Who had sent—God! Banichi and Jago—here.

The same team the aiji had sent to kill Saigimi—here, inside Ilisidi’s defenses. He’dseen this game before, the extreme gesture, this insertion of someone deadly dangerous as Banichi and Jago along with the very vulnerable paidhi inside Ilisidi’s defenses—challenging the dowager to make an overt move against him.

Or to take his pledge of alliance.

It was hard to keep his calm. But he stood there expressionless, having realized exactlywhat he’d been playing with when he’d taken Jase to Ilisidi.

He’d walked right into an operation of some kind, a thorn-patch where atevi could feel their way and he had to find it by sheer logic.

Did it feelright to Banichi and Jago right now? Did it feelright to Ilisidi and Cenedi? Or were atevi on one side or the other reaching some pitch of decision that would come crashing down?

Hadn’t he said it? The ship would send another one. So would the island.

No. No. Tabini couldn’t count on anyonemore on his side than he was if he shot Deana and demanded the backup to her. Which might say something about his own sanity—but it wasan atevi consideration, for a species that feltsomething about man’chi and its direction: a lord didn’t attack his own—ask them to die, yes, send them to die, yes, but not without gain to him and his partisans.

Either Tabini was very sure of Ilisidi—now—or ready to take a loss that would not be inconsiderable to his power, a sacrifice of a very major piece for nogain commensurate with the loss.

“So,” Ilisidi said in a tone of restrained anger. “If your man’chi is to the Barjidi, ifyou have sought the paidhi-aiji, perhaps you will deliver your information to the paidhi.”

The boy’s glance at him was instant and distraught. “I wish you to deliver what you have to say to the aiji-dowager,” Bren said, “as a lord in whom I have confidence.”

Clearly the boy looked marginally relieved. But scared. And going through layers upon layers in his mind, surely. He bowed one more time.“I heard people plotting against the aiji, nand’ dowager. I haven’t lied, nand’ dowager.”

“Young and foolish,” Ilisidi said. “What have you observed?”

“This human person. These pilots. Radios that move about the countryside and operate on the trains.”

On the trains, Bren thought in surprise. Of coursethat would be one way to get a broadcast into some remote village, trains passing through, radios operating on the public bands, on or off by turns.

But Tabini had to be aware of such things going on.

So must Ilisidi.

“Who would do such things?” Ilisidi asked.

“People who say the aiji is turning us over to humans.”

“Oh, and one day, one certain day some internal computer chip will make all our machines fail as the ship rains death-rays down on us and the humans pour off the island to ruin us—have you heard that one, nand’ paidhi?”

“No, aiji-ma, I have not.”

“More rational ones say that the ship itself is meant to fail, to bring down the government by that failure, and that the means will be a technical fault introduced through the designs themselves.”

He had heard that argued soberly in the council rooms of the legislature. “There are numerous reasons that’s not the case, nand’ dowager.”

“One has confidence in your confidence, nand’ paidhi. But you are sopersuasive.—What do yousay, young man?”

“About—”

The cane banged the pavement. “Your wits, boy! What werewe talking about?”

“About the aiji turning us over to humans, nand’ dowager.”

Ilisidi leaned forward, her hands clasped on the cane. “Do youbelieve it?”

“No, nand’ dowager.”

“Does your father the lord of Dur-wajran believe it?”

“No, nand’ dowager. We are—”

“—in the man’chi of the Barjidi.”

“And to all who support the aiji, nand’ dowager.”

“Does birthing the ingrate’s fathersettle me in the Barjidi man’chi?”

“If you will it to, nand’ dowager.”

Clearly the boy was losing his composure but not necessarily his wits. But a game of wits with the dowager was not one any boy could win.

“Say that my ingrate grandson and I should have the same interest,” Ilisidi said, leaning back, carefully skirting the question of whether she had an overlord, which was private and privileged information, but she admitted, for the first time he had ever heard, to associationwith Tabini. After years living among atevi a human could begin to hope he had the straight of it. “And say that your father, within the man’chi of the Barjidi, has sent his son to Shejidan—”

“My father never sent me—”

Bang! went the cane. “The hell, boy! Your father sent you when the assassination of lord Saigimi shook the inattentive out of bed from here to Malguri! You flew immediately to Shejidan, accidentally arriving inthe flight path of the aiji’s plane, and were involved with the tightened security so you could by no means deliver your message, which you have regularly attempted to inflict upon the paidhi! Am I correct!”

There was a small silence, a chastened demeanor. “Yes, nand’ dowager.”

“Why now? Why not earlier?”

“Because we didn’t know the aiji might not know. Because if it wasimportant, the aiji should know, nand’ dowager.”

“Going quickly and by stealth through the skies.”

“Yes, nand’ dowager.” The boy bowed his head. “I broke the law. I knew I broke it.”

“And broke it again coming here!”

“No, nand’ dowager. I took the train.”

Rarely did anyone get a reaction from the dowager when she was in thismood. The brows went up and crashed down, hard. “I mean coming through the barriers, young man! How did you know to come here!”

“It’s all over—” The boy took a breath. “All over the province, all over the country, I think, nand’ dowager.”

“You, young man, will go with my security, you will stay in your room, and in the stead of your father, who is in the man’chi of my ungrateful grandson, you will take orders from me, do you hear, or I will shoot you with my own hand.”

“ Yes, nand’ dowager.”

“Take him elsewhere!” Ilisidi said, and members of her staff collected the young man. “See he gets supper.”

The boy put up no argument about it. And Ilisidi, leaning on her cane, rose with a frown on her face.

“By train, indeed. Before we took off this morning, the boy left the capital. And changed trains.—nand’ paidhi.”

“Aiji-ma.”

“Radios. Radios, do you understand?”

“I have heard the rumor.”

A wave of Ilisidi’s hand. “To bed, to bed. Don’t concern yourself with tomorrow. We’ll go riding. Perhaps we’ll have a look at the sea and satisfy this intemperate young man you’ve brought me. He’s beginning to be interesting.”

He hesitated, then thought better of questioning Ilisidi.

“Aiji-ma,” he said, and turned and went for the steps, thinking that he had to get a few minutes alone with his security.

He heard someone behind him. He didn’t want to look and find out until he reached the privacy of the floor above.

Then he turned.

“Jago-ji.”

“Nand’ paidhi.”

“Nand’ paidhi,” he echoed, in not-quite-mock despair. “ Talkto me, Jago-ji.”

“My room,” Jago said.

He wasn’teager, now, to get himself into interpersonal maneuverings. But hehad a roommate. So did she, but Banichi was downstairs. Jase was in bed, and not, besides, the person he wanted to overhear a frank talk between himself and the aiji’s security about the aiji’s grandmother—besides, twice, his room was probably bugged.

He walked in that direction. She did, and opened the door and let him in.

He stood while she lit a match, and a candle. It was a room no different from his, except for the stack of baggage in the corner, a stack of mostly black objects.

He shut the door. And Jago looked at him, her eyes reflecting a disconcerting shimmer of gold.

“Are we safe with the dowager?” he whispered.

“One believes so, nand’ paidhi.”

Nand’ paidhi. He was vaguely disappointed. About what, he didn’t know, and told himself he was a fool, but he couldn’t but be conscious of her as someone he’d intimately trusted half a year ago; and he felt—he wasn’t sure. Set aside. Something like that.

“The aiji is aware of the situation,” Jago said, and then, straight-faced. “Should we whisper?”

At first he was moved to laugh and then thought of Jase next door.

“Our hearing isn’t that acute,” he said in a low voice. “What’s going on, Jago-ji? As much as you can tell me. I’ll rely on you to care for the rest.”

“In brief, nadi, it’s common knowledge the paidhiin are vacationing in the province. It was a news item yesterday evening, so the boy’s appearance is far from amazing.”

“Tabini is using us for hunting-bait.”

“One would hesitate to put it so inelegantly.”

“But true. Is it not?”

“True.”

“Meaning persons of ill intent will flock here.—Mogari-nai and the earth station are right across the hill, nadi! We’ll draw harm to it!”

A small pause. “Tabini-aiji has considered that proximity.”

Not among things the paidhi should know, then. Gunshots on the lawn.

Or such a lawn as this fallen-down place had.

“Don’t be out of countenance, nand’ paidhi. There is a purpose.”

“What purpose?” He tried not to become emotional, which only set atevi on the defensive with that, and not the issue. “I ask you, nadi, whom I greatly respect, are our interests protected?”

“By us, nadi.”

“I always have confidence in that, but, nadi—” He didn’t know what to say that Jago would understand. After all they’d been through they were back to that, and it was late, and he was not as sharp as he might have been an hour ago, or he was emotionally rattled and trying to think in too many different directions at once.

“What do you wish to say, nadi?” Jago asked.

He looked up at her, in the dark and the dim light that picked out the sparks of metal on her jacket, the gloss of her black skin, the gold shimmer of her steady gaze. And looked down and aside, because there just was no rational approach and the translator had no words. He wanted to ask what Tabini had in mind and he didn’t. He found himself in emotional danger, was what, and he had every reason to be concerned for himself.

“I’d better go,” he said, and reached back to the latch and ran into the door edge on his way out of this room.

“Nadi?” he heard behind him, quietly. Jago was confused, in itself a sign of the dangerous way he was dealing with things.

He went to his own room, and inside. The candle had burned down to half. Jase was in bed, a lump in the blankets, and didn’t react to his coming in.

He stripped down to his underwear in the biting cold from the slit window, was a little conscious of the exposure to that window, and snipers, even as small as that exposure was, and then told himself that there was some kind of electronic perimeter that had warned them of the boy’s approach, and that there was probably one of Ilisidi’s men posted to guard all those windows, which were certainly too small for an adult ateva, so the hell with it, he said to himself. He had to trust the security. He had no choice.

He sighted a line between there and the end of the bed, and blew out the candle. He managed the transit most of the way, bashed his leg on the far corner post of the bed, and drew a deep breath from Jase.

“Is that you?”

“So far as I know,” he muttered, settled from cold air to a cold bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Jase was a warmth beside him. He shivered and tried not to.

“Find out anything?”

The brain wasn’t primed to work. Other things had been in operation. He tried to recover where he’d left Jase in the information flow. “Kid’s not a threat,” he said. And remembered Jase didn’t know anything about anything except they weren’t at the beach and Jase wanted to go fishing.

God save them.

“I imagine we’ll go riding tomorrow morning. Just be patient. We might ride down to the beach.”

“Can you get there from here?”

“Far as I know. Or we might go up to Mogari-nai. It’s near here. There’s an old site there.”

“Why are we visiting all these old things?”

The question astonished him. But professional judgment cut in and informed him that it might be ship-culture at work.

And where was Jase to learn the value of anything historic, if his world was the ship?

And where was Jase to derive the value of rare species? Or the concept of saving the ecology, if Jase’s view was that of a steel ship and lights that kept a computer’s schedule?

Where did one start?

“Understand,” he said calmly, into the dark above his head, “that the preservation of all life on this planet is of great value, the animals, the plants, all valuable. So is the record of what lies in the past. Accept that this is valuable, not only to the dowager, but to me. Can you imagine that? They’re not just old places.”

“I—” Jase said. “I found it very strange to handle the descent pod. To walk in the station corridors. It was—a very lonely place. Very old.”

“Atevi feel the same about such places as this. Only add a thousand years to the account. On Mospheira, when you walk into the old earth base command center, and you see all the clocks stopped, on the minute the power went—in the War—Mospheirans feel something like that. So don’t call it ‘old places.’ They’re more than that. And you know more than that. Clearly you do.”

There was a long silence. Just a living presence in the dark.

“We anticipated—a great deal—” Jase said in a quiet voice, in the human language, “getting here. We didn’t know what we’d find. We imagined there’d be changes. But when the station didn’t answer our hail, we feared everyone had died.”

He tried to imagine that. “It must have been a frightening moment.”

“Frightening for a long time, while we were moving in. The systems wouldn’t respond. Shut down, on conserve, was what we found. But we didn’t know. We were really glad when we found there were human beings alive down here.”

“And when you knew atevi had advanced so far?” It was amazing that they hadn’t had this conversation already, but they hadn’t. “How did you feel?”

“Hopeful,” Jase said. “Really hopeful. We were gladof it, Bren, I swear to you.”

“I think I believe that.” He did. “Unfortunately it’s not a hundred percent that way on Mospheira.”

“The resources,” Jase said, “are on thisside of the strait.”

“There are powers on both sides,” Bren said, “that want something besides atevi in space.” He took a chance. “What does the ship want?”

A little silence there, just a little silence. “The ship wants somebodyup there that can repair what’s broken.”

“Wasn’t that why the colonists and the crew went separate ways at the beginning? Colonists wouldn’t bea cheap labor force?”

“It’s not like that,” Jase said. “It won’t belike that.”

“Damn right,” Bren said, “it won’t belike that.”

But they meant, he was sure, different things.

There was silence, then. Maybe Jase thought the topic was getting too dangerous. Maybe, and it was his own notion, there was just nothing they could say to each other until that ship flew, and until they had options.

His mother might have had surgery by now, he thought. He didn’t know. He thought, hell, he was within driving distance of the biggest communications post in the world, and he couldn’t get a damn telephone? The communications his security had was instant and connected to everywhere but Mospheira. He should have asked for a phone.

He had the whole weight of the atevi government if he wanted to try to extract information, but the whole weight of the atevi government had to be used for atevi purposes and affairs of state, not, dammit, news from his family.

He stared at the dark above him and asked himself what kind of an impression he’d made on Jago, bolting from the room the way he’d done.

He’d have been warmer, distracted from his other problems, at least.

But Banichi would have come in for the night.

He didn’t know what he’d have done, or said, or what he’d have explained. Likely Jago and Banichi both would have been amused. He wasn’t sure he was capable of laughing at the joke. Not tonight, not now, not as things were.

He heard a quiet snoring beside him. Jase at least was tired enough to sleep. He thought of elbowing Jase in the ribs so hecould rest; but he decided it wasn’t that likely he would for a while.

Rest, however, just lying on his back on a surface that didn’t move, piled high with blankets in a bed that was getting warm in air that was almost cold enough for frost…

He heard an engine.

Distant, but clearly an engine where none belonged.

No reason to be alarmed. There was a perimeter set.

His security was not going to allow anything to slip up on them. Neither was Ilisidi’s.

But what in hell? he wondered.

He heard it come closer, and closer, and finally saw the faintest hint of light touch the wall and vanish.

More engines—than lights.

Vehicles were moving about inside the perimeter.

The snoring had stopped.

“What’s that?” Jase asked. In Ragi.

“I don’t know.” He flung the blankets aside and got up, barefoot, in his underwear, and felt his way around the end of the bed. He went to the window, in the cold draft, as Jase got up on his side of the bed and joined him in looking out.

“Security, maybe?” Jase asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing Jago made me aware of.”

“You suppose everything’s all right?”

It was on a side of the building not exposed to their view. The back side, he thought. As the vehicles had come up from that side.

There was a time he’d have run to Jago a couple of doors down and asked for explanation. But this time the conspiracy was of his arranging, and he still didn’t know the extent of it.

He had a sinking feeling if he asked Jago she wouldn’t know, either. And that if anything were wrong he’d hear about it from Jago and from Banichi.

Hell, he hadn’tsurvived this long by leaving assumptions lie.

“Stay here,” he said to Jase and, numb beyond feeling, snatched a blanket for decency and went out into the hall.

It was dark, excepting the candles.

And one of Ilisidi’s young men, who stood in the shadows, whose eyes cast back the light.

“What is it?” he asked the man.

“Supplies and such,” the man said. “Sleep peacefully, nand’ paidhi.”

“Banichi,” he called out, worried that the mere opening of his door hadn’t brought his security out of the soundest sleep. “Jago?”

“One believes they’re helping below, nand’ paidhi.”

“I’ll talk to them,” he said. “You have communications.”

“Yes, nand’ paidhi.” The man drew the pocket com out and flicked the switch. “Nandi. The paidhi would wish to speak to his security.”

There was a reply he couldn’t hear: the man had it against his ear. But he gave it to Bren.

“Banichi-ji?” he asked.

“ Bren-ji?” It was Banichi, he had no doubt of that voice. “ Is there a problem?”

“Is there reason for us to get dressed and come down?”

“ No, nadi. Go to sleep. Everything is fine. We’ll be early to rise.”

“Well enough, then. Good night. Take care, nadi-ji.” He handed the com back to its owner, feeling foolish on the one hand, himself with frozen feet and one frozen shoulder, and gave a courteous sketch of a bow, having doubted the man’s authority, before going back to the room.

Jase had lit a candle. It was something Jase had seen servants do. From him, it was a piece of ingenuity. Jase stood there holding it, in his underwear, shielding the light from the gust produced by the door and the window.

“What’s happening?” Jase whispered.

“It’s all right.” He didn’t whisper. He whisked the blanket off and put it back on the bed. Tucked the foot of it in.

And got in. Jase said, “I hurt my leg getting the matches.”

Jase had. He could see the skinned knee. Jase had taken a fall in the dark and he was mad.

“Sorry. Want a bandage? I’m sure the man outside can get one.”

“No,” Jase said, brought the candle to bed and then went back after something, probably the matches. It wasn’t natural to think of both. Not in Jase’s world.

Jase blew the light out and, Bren guessed, set the candle and the matches on the floor beside the bed and got in, half frozen, Bren was sure. He felt Jase’s silence as a reproach. He’d deceived Jase too often, too long, and now Jase took for granted that was the final answer: it wasn’t just Jase’s rules-following soul.

“I’m a little worried,” he said to Jase.

There was no answer. Jase wasmad; and shivering beside him, which might be the cold sheets; and might be the situation.

“I don’t think they want us to know everything that’s happening,” Bren said. “Jase, I’m telling you the truth, things may be all right. But there’s been a lot going on in the world, and it’s just possible things are a bit more complicated than seemed.”

“You want me to ask.”

He didn’t even know what he was trying to say. “I just want you to know—I asked the dowager to show you the old ways. I wanted to help you. I wanted you to have the advantage I’ve had—in learning about atevi.”

“So I won’t make a fool of myself?”

It was his turn to be quiet. Jase had a knack, as he supposed he did, for taking the most delicately offered sentiment, and turning it inside out.

“Thanks,” Jase said after a while. “Thanks for the thought.”

Bren was still mad. And still didn’t think Jase remotely understood him. And didn’t want to get his adrenaline up any higher when he was trying to sleep.

“I’ve done the best I know how,” he said to Jase finally. “I’ve tried to teach you.”

The silence hung there a moment. From both sides.

Then Jase said, “I’ve tried to learn.”

“I know that. You’ve done a brilliant job.”

“Years left to get better at it,” Jase said. “Got to. Ship’s got to fly.”

“Yeah,” he said. It was disappointing, in his view, that he couldn’t make Jase like life here, where he was. But whatever motivated Jase to study, whatever kept him wanting to go back, that was what he ought to encourage.

And Jase wanted to get back to his mother. He understood that part. Obligations. Divisions. Desperation.

He didn’t know how his own was doing, or whether calls might have come in—if anything went wrong, surely Toby would call him.

“So what’s going on out there?” Jase asked him.

Deep breath. “I think a number of vans or something came in.” More motors than lights. He didn’t mention that. One running with lights. The rest without. The electronic perimeter admitting them.

“So what did the guard say?”

“Supplies. Breakfast, maybe.” He couldn’t but think of the geography of the place—Mogari-nai, which was reachable by air and by a road up from the modern town of Saduri; and the town and the airport down one face of a steep rise on which this ancient fortress was posed, that faced Geigi on one side; and on the other side, the island of Dur.

Whose young heir was locked in for the night, he supposed. They didn’t have keys for the bedrooms, but he’d about bet they’d found one for wherever they were keeping the boy.

What might be going on out there might involve calling the lord of Dur-wajran and informing him they now had a young idiot who could be reclaimed for suitable forthcoming information on the other side.

Politics. Tabini. The dowager. And those damned radio transmissions.

18

They walked out the front door and down the steps together, with the dawn coloring the sky, Ilisidi and Cenedi in the lead, and the rest of them, except the servants, all in casual hunting clothing, meaning heavy twill coats with the back button undone for riding, and trousers and boots that would withstand abuse far beyond that of the casual walk down a hallway. Jase, Bren had discovered early on, could wear his clothing and, their outing being on too short a notice for tailor-work, he’d contributed all his outdoor wardrobe to the adventure and packed for two.

Now, borrowed riding crops tucked beneath their arms, he and Jase walked down the steps in the middle of the company. Jago was walking with Banichi, just ahead of them, carrying the computer. Even in this event he didn’t leave it.

He wished that he’d had a chance this morning to speak with either of them at length—he wished this morning that he’d not bolted last night, though he was still unsure it wasn’t the wisest thing to have done—and now he wasn’t certain that Jago hadn’t intended to keep him busy and away from hearing and seeing whatever had gone on last night.

They’d not had a formal breakfast, and they’d had not a single hint what that noise had been last night. A lot of transport moving about. But no sign of it this morning. And as for breakfast—here in the open air came servants passing out cups and rolled sandwiches.

Bren took one, and when Jase didn’t think he wanted a sandwich, Bren nudged him in the arm. “Yes, you do.”

“They’re fish!”

“Eat it,” he said, and Jase took one and took the drink. So they had their breakfast standing there. Tea steamed and sent up clouds into the morning air all about the crowd at the foot of the steps.

Meanwhile he tried to catch Jago’s eye, but she didn’t look at him. On one level, probably not sensible, he feared he’d offended her last night by ducking out in such a hurry, or looked like a fool, or possibly he’d just amused or disappointed her.

But on another level common sense told him that the little business between himself and Jago last night hadhad no time to resolve the deeper questions between them, and that he’d been very sensible to be out the door before it became something else under what amounted to the dowager’s roof. At the very worst that might have happened, he could have gotten himself into an adventure he was neither emotionally nor personally quite sure of—and possibly she’d invited him in for the simple reason they needed to keep him away from information. Ironically that reassured him that his own security was involved in whatever was going on. To them he would commit his life without a question.

Maybe they didn’t know that.

Maybe they didn’t understand how he likedJago, that dreadful word, and was attracted, he began to admit it; and did wonder certain things which could only be resolved by trying them.

But last night hadn’t been that time.

He handed over his cup as the servants passed back through collecting them. He kept near Jase.

Fact: they had a young atevi in detention in their midst, an uncertain situation on their hands with Ilisidi, and somebody had been rummaging about the hilltop last night in motorized transport of which there was no sign nor acknowledgement.

So their lives just might be at some risk, not an uncommon situation in the last year but a situation that didn’t need the additional complication of his distraction with Jago.

He had caught Banichi for one fast question in the upstairs hall: “Is there a reason for this rush? What in hell was going on last night?” and Banichi had said, “None that I know, nothing I can say, but we’re going with the dowager, nadi: what darewe say?”

Banichi had been in an extreme hurry at the time. And Jago had been ahead of both of them. Banichi had only caught up to her in the downstairs hall and then they were out the door.

Bren looked around now counting heads. Tano and Algini hadn’t shown up yet, in the general flow of Ilisidi’s men outside. There were about twenty such men, in all, that he’d counted last night—doubtless a felicitous number, but one rarely saw all of Ilisidi’s men on any occasion: the activity of communications and guard that surrounded her was the same as that around Tabini, and the number of them was just not something either Ilisidi or her guards freely unfolded to view.

He did see that the boy from Dur had come out with them, no longer in handcuffs, just a silent presence in that foolish and very dangerous black clothing he’d chosen, and closely escorted by two guards.

Presumably, in this outing, this proposed ride out to look at the countryside and to take the air, it was necessary that young Rejiri come along with them. That was very curious.

But something had Tano and Algini notmeeting them out here, notalready outside, and that was also curious.

Possibly Banichi had given them a job to do. A message to run down to the airport or, silly thought, up to Mogari-nai, which not only had the earth station that had monitored the space station for decades; but was the major link in a web of electronic communication.

It had the earth station and also a set of dishes aimed all along the coast toward Mospheira, as Mospheira aimed a similar array toward the mainland.

It was a nerve center, his security had informed him, which was run by the Messengers’ Guild, which had not been outstandingly cooperative with him, or with Tabini.

Jase said, in a fit of depression over his father and the party and his own situation, I’d like to go to the ocean. He’dsaid to himself, foolish as he was, why not go to Geigi’s estate for a little fishing, and catch that fabled yellowtail? And maybe a little riding. The mechieti hadn’t gone back to Malguri for the summer.

So he’d gone to the dowager to see was she willing to back him up, with the notion shecould teach Jase what he’d learned—and she’dsaid, well, of course it had made sense to come to the government reserve just across the bay rather than to go to Geigi’s house asking hospitality—much more politically sound a move, Geigi could visit them here, by boat, an easy trip, the airport and van service lying just right on the water.

The hell! Bren thought to himself. He’d not appreciated the vertical scale, when Ilisidi had said the government site practically overlooked the airport.

He hadn’t truly appreciated at all how close it was to Mogari-nai, whose situation atop high bluffs overlooking the sea he didknow.

He hadn’t appreciated the involvement of Dur, either, and itsproximity to the illicit radio traffic in the north—saying that Dur was near the site was like saying Mospheira was. When you were on the coast there were islands, and nothing was that unreachably far from anywhere else if you wanted to derive trouble from it.

Hehadn’t expected the boy from Dur to show up last night.

But neither had Ilisidi—at least—if she had, she’d pretended well.

Traffic in the night—that his own security had expected, or not been overly dismayed by, so either it was routine and it waskitchen supplies coming up for some surprise banquet tomorrow, or it was something that lay within their man’chi—and thatcame down to very few items.